CD Mastering

At Astar our large studio provides a perfect and comfortable listening environment where we prefer where possible to offer Attended Mastering Sessions. This is because we passionately believe that having spent days, weeks or months recording a project, it is vitally important for the artist, producer or record company to participate in what is the final stage in the recording process, in order to feel confident that the result is absolutely perfect and sounds fantastic throughout.

About mastering

Professional mastering is an essential part of the recording process and the final creative stage before manufacture. In fact many engineers will mix their projects with mastering in mind. Few people are aware that virtually every major-release Audio CD has been professionally mastered.

In its simplest form, mastering is basically the creation of a high-spec production master , however, more often it involves a subtle but dramatic creative process, requiring great empathy and skill on the part of the engineer. Each track is assessed on its own merits and treated accordingly, but at the same time all tracks are brought together to work as a "whole", to make an album a consistent listening experience.

Astar has vast experience providing post-production for a wide range of projects. The sophisticated equipment we have available allows us to make adjustments to Level, EQ, dynamics, gaps and fades, noise-shaping - any aspect of your project - adjustments which can be so subtle they are scarcely audible, or so radical as to transform the sound almost beyond recognition.

Our experienced engineers will assess your source and advise you on possible improvements or enhancements to ensure that your project is the best it can possibly be using their editing and musical skills to improve your audio if need be, whether it's removing noises like vocal 'plosives' or clicks, radical editing like changing the structure of a track for radio play, or reworking a start or ending.